I am relatively new to Space Engine but have version 0.9.6.2 and all official addons, and recently came to notice that the random star generator of the program not only produces stars in regions as of yet uncatalogued by the human race, but also within the tight radius of as little as twenty parsecs around the Earth, in which it can be claimed with reasonable confidence that all stars, including several faint brown dwarves, have been identified. In fact, at one point, the Engine identified a random binary star system consisting of a red dwarf and its brown dwarf companion just over a light year from the solar system, visibly closer to Earth than Proxima in the universe map. Since I know it is one of the goals of SpaceEngine to be scientifically accurate to known data, evident in its observation of the Hipparcos Catalogue, I was wondering if there was either a solution to this I've as of yet overlooked or plans to fix this, perhaps by limiting the random star generator to a certain radius, depending on the luminosity of the random stars, around the solar system.

Well, I'm glad to hear the community is so active already in working with this kind of thing! Hopefully as I become more well-versed around the forums I'll get to know what kind of problems are already answered or not. Thank you all again for your time; I'll get right to configuring.

In fact, at one point, the Engine identified a random binary star system consisting of a red dwarf and its brown dwarf companion just over a light year from the solar system, visibly closer to Earth than Proxima in the universe map

I've noticed that too but only after installing Solari's latest Galaxy addon. Somehow the galaxys catalog .sc file has been modified and that affected the procedural star generation algorithm.

Quote (SpaceEngineer)

The apparent magnitude limit is controlled by StarMaxAppMagn in the universe.cfg.

So what value shall we use in StarMaxAppMagn in order to eliminate this procedural star appearance within a 20-50 parsec radius from sol?

So what value shall we use in StarMaxAppMagn in order to eliminate this procedural star appearance within a 20-50 parsec radius from sol?

Why would you want to eliminate procedural stars within that large of a radius? Only a small amount of the real stars that are there are covered in the Hipparcos catalog. The space there would be anomalously sparse. You'd probably want no more than a 10 parsec radius. Regardless of distance, you'd have to figure out how bright the dimmest star that could be generated is, and whatever its AppMagn would be, that would be the input. At 10 parsecs it's simple because AbsMagn = AppMagn. So if you wanted no stars at all within 10 parsecs, a magnitude value of about 14.00 would achieve that, since that is the magnitude of the dimmest red dwarves. These would be unnoticeable when flying around, so stars would not appear to be generated until well outside the 10 parsec distance. This would give you the effect you desire.

Hm you are probably right about the radius: 10Pc (or maybe even less) should be more appropriate. I was talking of parsecs but I was thinking of LYs in my head. . So if I just wanted to eliminate any procedural stars within a 5 Lys radius (around 1.53 Pcs) so as to avoid this annoying red dwarf that is generated at 1 Ly from sol, should I use a 15-16 Mag Value?